Bio - 199 - Elizabeth Taylor: There Is Nothing Like a Dame

by Darwin Porter

  “I tried to act as sophisticated as I could, even though he was old enough to be my father. We talked a lot about the script of That Hagen Girl, and he had serious doubts about his own role within it. We bonded over our mutual concerns for our careers. I was trying to cross the bridge between child star and adult roles, and he was trying to hold onto his role as a leading romantic figure as he moved into middle age in the 1950s. Neither of us wanted to be a footnote in some survey of movies of the 1940s.”

  “He was a pretty good cook, and he’d bought the world’s most delicious rum-laced chocolate cake with ‘drunken’ cherries on top. I volunteered to help with the dishes, but he told me a maid would come to clean up in the morning.”

  “We sat on his sofa, and I could tell he wanted to get it on. But he seemed reluctant to make the first move, probably because of my age. I finally took Judy Garland’s advice and became the aggressor. God, I wished they’d been casting Lolita around that time…I could have won an Oscar playing the nymphet. When he found my tongue down his throat and my hand massaging his goodies, he was mine for the night.”

  “Once I broke the ice, he took charge,” she claimed. “After a heavy make-out session on the sofa, with a lot of fondling of my breasts, we went into the bedroom, where he stripped me. He was somewhat reluctant, but he finally removed his clothing. When he dropped his boxer shorts, I was pleasantly surprised. By then, I knew that God did not create all men equally, and that he was hung better than average. He put on a condom—he called it a ‘rubber’—and assured me that it was the most expensive on the market, so I didn’t have to fear getting pregnant.”

  “Let me give credit where credit is due,” she said. “It was the longest running fuck I’d ever had up to that point. I didn’t exactly time it, but it went on for at least forty-five minutes. It wasn’t the greatest lay of my life, but it ranked up there with the best of them. He seemed very concerned with my own satisfaction, and I liked him for that.”

  “As soon as he’d shot off—finally—he rushed for the showers. He was the cleanest smelling man I’ve ever known, unlike Richard Burton, who was often smelly and stunk like a brewery. Reagan must have enjoyed it, because he called me ten days later for a repeat.”

  “I turned him down because at this point I had been introduced to the one star in Hollywood who was better in the sack than any other. But that’s a story for another day.”

  Elizabeth’s story has been dismissed by some of her critics and fans, some of whom believe that her oft-repeated recitation was a politically motivated fabrication intended to embarrass President Reagan.

  However, when actress Piper Laurie published her memoirs, Learning to Live Out Loud, in 2011, Elizabeth’s rendition became far more plausible.

  In Louisa (1950), the then-teenaged Piper was cast as Reagan’s daughter. She wrote that Reagan seduced her during the shoot. In her case, she was not only a teenager, but a virgin.

  So the possibility of Reagan’s seduction of young Elizabeth was not out of character. There were numerous other stories about Reagan’s seductions of young women—girls, really—that circulated about him during his years in Hollywood, stories which were amplified and expanded after his election as President.

  Piper Laurie

  When Elizabeth’s former lover, Frank Sinatra, got together for booze and laughs, he always told her that he’d seduced two First Ladies and that she’d been sexually intimate with two U.S. Presidents.

  “The big difference between them,” she jokingly recalled, “was how long each of them was in the saddle. I much preferred the second president’s politics to those of Reagan. But, in all fairness to Reagan, this other president (JFK) had one big drawback. He was a two-minute man.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World”

  The 1947 film, Cynthia, cast Elizabeth in her first role as a maturing adolescent, marking a major transformation from the child star of National Velvet to her emergence as a beautiful young woman—that is, a very young and a very beautiful woman. Beginning with this movie, two titles were bestowed on her by the Hollywood press machine: “Princess of Hollywood” and “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World.”

  For the first time, she appeared on the cover of Life magazine. Throughout her life, she would pose for more Life covers than any other actress. Cynthia would also mark her first screen kiss, a chaste smooch from James (Jimmy) Lydon, whose World War II Henry Aldrich film series had provided competition for Mickey Rooney, who, after his marriage to Ava Gardner, was hardly convincing any more as the youthful, innocent Andy.

  Cynthia, whose story was based on Viña Delmar’s Broadway flop, The Rich, Full Life. was promoted as “a teenaged version of Camille.” Its plot centered around a sickly, sheltered teen beauty who rebels against overprotective parents, played by Mary Astor and George Murphy. Cynthia finds a boyfriend, Lydon, who takes her to the senior prom, giving her a good night kiss—pretty innocent stuff for an actress who one day would be called “The Serpent of the Nile.”

  A femme fatale reduced to mother roles, Astor wrote about Elizabeth in her memoir, Life on Film, and had additional, more provocative, comments to make about her in private to fellow cast members. “Elizabeth was cool and slightly superior,” she wrote. “There was a look in those violet eyes that was somewhat calculating. She was quite sure of what she wanted and was quite sure of getting it.”

  When Elizabeth, in later years, read that, she said, “What an acute observation from the Astor bitch. It’s amazing that she was so perceptive, considering she was drunk every day.”

  Throughout the shoot, Astor battled the bottle. After the filming of Cynthia ended, she entered rehab, as would Elizabeth herself in the years to come.

  In later interviews, Astor was more revealing of her feelings. “Elizabeth had begun taking sedatives to calm her nerves. She appeared on set very high strung and brittle and snapped at you if you dared speak to her. Like Cynthia in the film, Elizabeth required a lot of sick leave. I think she had already begun to take herself too seriously and to believe her press clippings. She was preparing for the melodramatic lifestyle that would follow in her later years. My God, she was only fifteen and ordering her mother to leave the set and go home. The cast learned why. After work, Elizabeth was seen driving away with John Derek, even Errol Flynn. And in the 1930s, I was called a scarlet woman. Errol should have been dating me—not Elizabeth.”

  Elizabeth understood the character of Cynthia and even gave advice to the screenwriter and director, according to George Murphy. “She wanted to move into the adult world far too soon. I felt guilty setting her up with Ronald Reagan. I loved Ronnie dearly, but when it came to women, he could go too far. My God, in a year or so, he would be pursuing Marilyn Monroe. Of course, there are worse things than screwing Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.”

  Top photo: July, 14, 1947 cover of Life magazine —the first of four devoted to Elizabeth during the course of her career, and

  Lower photos: Co-workers who were less than enchanted by the antics of young Elizabeth: left : Mary Astor, and right: Director Robert Z. Leonard

  The director of Cynthia was Robert Z. Leonard, who had in the 1920s married the blonde silent screen vamp, Mae Murray, famed for her 1925 portrayal of The Merry Widow.

  “From what I’d observed, Elizabeth Taylor was turning into a little whore, and Sara seemed none the wiser,” Leonard claimed to Mary Astor and George Murphy. “Of course, I could be wrong. Privately, Sara may have known everything that was going on and was just maintaining a pristine public image. Everybody in Hollywood did that. Elizabeth was complaining to the press that boys were intimidated by her fame and were too afraid to ask her out on a date. That was pure bullshit. No dates! Hell, she was sucking off John Derek and doing God knows what with Errol Flynn. I can’t believe how many writers fell for Elizabeth’s line. Here she was, hailed as the most beautiful woman in the world, and complaining that men wouldn’t go out with her— in Hollywood, of
all places! I would have fucked her myself if she’d picked up on my signals.”

  Leonard would have been a bit old for Elizabeth, as he’d been born in Chicago in 1889. She was pleased to be working with such an experienced director, who had been nominated for Oscars for helming The Divorcée in 1930 and The Great Ziegfeld in 1936.

  When introduced to him on the first day of the shoot, Elizabeth said, “Oh, Mr. Leonard, I’ve researched your career. Here you are directing Jimmy Lydon and me in a silly little romance when you once directed Clark Gable and Greta Garbo in Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise).”

  “I want to grow up fast, even faster than I’m doing,” she told Leonard. “I know I’m very young, but have the emotions of a woman twice my age. I want to create a world for myself away from my parents and MGM.”

  “What kind of a world would that be?” Leonard asked.

  “A world filled with men, lots of men,” she said, smiling.

  Her remarks were tamer in the summer of 1947 when she went on a radio show hosted by Louella Parsons. She bluntly told the gossip maven, “I want to become a great actress. But mostly, I want to snare a husband. Boys my own age bore me.”

  Privately, she told Parsons. “I’ll be auditioning several beaux over the next few months until I find the man most suited to me.”

  When Parsons quizzed her about the estrangement of her father and mother, she ducked the question, claiming that both of her parents were busy pursuing their own careers.

  Cynthia was shot out of sequence, and the kissing scene with Lydon was one of the first to be filmed. Leonard also directed and filmed Elizabeth’s kissing scene at the end of the movie. “She’s not well versed in pucking,” he said. “The difference on film between her early kiss and the film’s concluding kiss was day and night. By the end of the shoot, Errol Flynn had taught her everything she ever knew or wanted to know about sex. She should always be grateful to her sexual mentor.”

  Lydon wasn’t all that excited by the kiss. “It was almost a half-century ago,” he said, “and people are still talking about it. At the time, I didn’t view it as a milestone. It felt more like a handshake. Elizabeth also sang a song in the movie. Her voice was a bit shrill, rather reedy, if you ask me.”

  During the filming of Cynthia, Sara changed her position about wanting Elizabeth to prolong her role as a child star, as Mickey Rooney had done. When she saw how Shirley Temple was failing at the box office as a young adult, Sara insisted on major changes in Elizabeth’s appearance. “She deliberately encouraged her to dress far older than she was, and to show bosom,” according to Lawford.

  `Spencer Tracy observed her in the MGM commissary. “Every day she showed up revealing her tits. It gave even older guys like me hard-ons.”

  The First Lady of the United States was not impressed. Harry Truman’s wife, Bess, invited Elizabeth and other stars to the White House to attend a March of Dimes campaign. Making a stunning entrance, Elizabeth arrived in a black velvet dress, cut very low, a white fur coat, and a pair of seamless black nylon stockings. Mrs. Truman at the head table was overheard, “That Elizabeth Taylor child has some nerve coming here dressed up like one of those hussies Joan Crawford plays in films. If (my daughter) Margaret ever did that to me, I would take her out to the woodshed and give her a whipping she’d never forget.”

  Back in Hollywood, Elizabeth found that in spite of her grown-up appearance in Washington, she was still seated at the children’s table at the MGM commissary. She was approached by a photographer, who asked her if she’d pose for pictures in a bathing suit.

  After checking with Sara, Elizabeth agreed to pose on a Santa Monica beach. She wore a revealing one-piece white bathing suit. The photographer snapped some two-hundred pictures of her, which were widely printed and distributed. At the end of the shoot, he told her, “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever photographed, and I’ve shot all the top stars—Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, Betty Grable, Lana Turner.”

  GENERATION GAP: left photo: Elizabeth Taylor kissing James Lydon in Cynthia

  right photo: First Lady Bess Truman at the White House: Dire warnings about what would happen “If my daughter (Margaret) ever dressed like that Elizabeth Taylor.....”

  The next day, Sara telephoned Hedda Hopper, who repeated the photographer’s praise in her column, stating that Elizabeth was “the most beautiful woman in the world.” So far as it is known, this was the first time that appellation— soon to be repeated around the globe for years to come—first appeared in newsprint.

  The next week, Hopper ran another headline—ELIZABETH TAYLOR’S PARENTS REUNITED. Sara had taken ill and had called Francis to come home and take care of her and help her look after Elizabeth. She reminded him that she considered divorce out of the question. He agreed to those terms and would bring her son, Howard, back into the household.

  However, during their discussions of a reconciliation, he informed her that he planned to continue his affair with Adrian. He also reserved the right to bring young men in for sleepovers after Elizabeth and Howard had gone to bed.

  It was during this time that Michael Curtiz ended his affair with Sara, tossing her aside for the blonde World War II goddess with the peek-a-boo bangs, Veronica Lake.

  Upon its release, Cynthia became the most popular film shown at U.S. military bases all over the world. During its depiction of Elizabeth’s screen kiss, the servicemen often hooted and hollered. As one soldier put it, “Compared to the noise the men made over Cynthia, our artillery fire sounded like small firecrackers.”

  Across America, movie houses organized “Why I deserve to be kissed by Liz” contests. One sailor maintained that he deserved the award because he had an abnormally long tongue that could not be completely concealed when he closed his mouth. “I could reach to the back of her throat,” he wrote on his entry form at a movie theater in San Diego, enclosing a picture of himself with his tongue out.

  When Howard Strickling, representing MGM’s publicity department, jokingly presented this contestant’s application and picture to Elizabeth, she said she found it disgusting. She refused to reward any of the contest winners from around the country with a kiss.

  She showed the sailor’s picture to Roddy McDowall. “I bet he’d be good at cunnilingus and rimming, too.” Roddy exclaimed. Then he was forced to explain to Elizabeth what both of those terms meant.

  “Then perhaps I’ll have to reconsider this long-tongued sailor boy,” she told Roddy.

  When Cynthia was released, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times dismissed it, referring to it as “a synthetic morsel right from the Metro candy box.” Other, more appreciative critics interpreted it as a cinematic milestone in the depiction of adolescent independence, defining Cynthia as a rebel who opts not to let life defeat her the way it did her parents.

  Audiences were treated to a revised public image of Elizabeth—one where she looked “drop-dead gorgeous.” For the first time, she appeared with her hair swept up. Around her neck, she wore a heart-shaped locket that had been depicted on the cover of Life magazine.

  Elizabeth had already seen Cynthia at a preview, but she asked Roddy to take her to a regular afternoon screening of the film in Pasadena. She slipped in after the screening began and ducked out right before the final scene, as she didn’t want to be recognized.

  Afterward, she asked Roddy, “I looked grown-up, didn’t I?”

  “You looked exactly like Greta Garbo in Two-Faced Woman,” he said facetiously.

  “From now on, I’m no longer a teenager except in age,” she told him. “Let’s face it: Both of us like dick and plenty of it. You’ve already had every actor in Hollywood, and I want to top your record, even though you’ve got a head start. I’m tired of waiting.”

  “You’re not waiting,” he reminded her. “You’ve already had more affairs than the typical American gal has in a lifetime.”

  “Just watch me go,” she said. “I’m only at the starting gate.”

  ***

  The
knave of hearts, the greatest rogue of them all, the swashbuckler in countless adventures: At last, Michael Curtiz brought Errol Flynn to the set to introduce him to Elizabeth. He wasn’t quite forty when she met him. The talk in Hollywood was that he had prematurely aged because of all his drinking, drugs, and debaucheries.

  She found him amazing looking, one of the most handsome men she’d ever met. He was charming and suave and spoke with a slight British-Australian accent. He’d obviously come from a tennis game. She was aware that most players on tennis courts in those days wore only white, but he was dressed in sunflower yellow shorts, a yellow T-shirt, and even yellow tennis shoes and socks.

  “Hello, I’m Errol Flynn. You obviously are Elizabeth Taylor.”

  She’d dreamed about what her first words to him would be. She wanted them to be piquant and memorable. “There’s one thing no one told me about you,” she said.

  “And what might that be, my dear?” he asked.

  “You have the male version of Betty Grable’s legs,”she said.

  “That’s not all I have,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks.

  She was dazzled by his eyes. They were a beautiful brown color but flecked with gold, and they twinkled as he spoke. He took her hand. When he smiled, he flashed pearly white teeth. After kissing her hand, he gently held it.

  She wanted to remember this moment so she could report every tiny detail to Dick Hanley and Roddy McDowall. Here was “Robin Hood” and “Captain Blood” in the flesh, perfectly tanned and with perfect manners, except when it came to speaking to Curtiz.

  Curtiz and Flynn often exchanged insulting banter, as each man knew the other’s most deadly secrets. “You’ve got to watch this guy,” Errol warned Elizabeth. “He’s a vicious Hungarian with a tongue like a cobra’s.”